A Genetic Gastric Bypass

The platypus genome, which was published for the first time last week, has proved to be a Whitman's sampler of biological treats. In case you missed the initial reports, you can check out a good summary from PZ Myers (and also take a look at Ryan Gregory's take-down of the bad coverage). But today I just happened to come across another treat that, to my knowledge, hadn't yet been picked out from the box. It's a paper that came out today in Genome Biology. It concerns a very cool side of evolution that not many people appreciate. Species can evolve when their genes are modified, or when they acquire new ones. But the platypus turns out to be a great example of how species can evolve by losing genes. When scientists sequencing the platypus genome matched up genes from the platypus to the genes from other mammals, a bunch of ...